Two Return to France

[DBK]

We've been able to follow the Loire fairly closely today, especially in the afternoon as we ascended up the "Gorges de la Loire" on a good road with frequent views of the river, such as the one below. The river is frequently dammed along this stretch, with both large dams creating significant lakes and other low dams creating what look more like long pools - as visible below.

You can see the landscape has really changed now compared to all the previous photographs. The mountains (the beginning of the Massif Central of course) started almost as soon as we left the last aire with some spectacular displays of yellow broom in flower beside the road. It hasn't got any cooler though, the temperature now, just before six local time is still 27°C.
We are at a tiny aire in the village of Voray sur Arzon, CC4228. €2 a night to stay here and another €2 for a jeton for water, pay at the campsite reception, which is about 50m away.

Location map:

The plan tomorrow is to drive the short distance to the ACSI campsite at Le Monastier sur Gazeille from where we will launch the final assault on the Loire in an attempt to reach the source.

 

[DBK]

We explored Voray sur Arzon yesterday evening, it didn't take very long! A tiny village but with an interesting war memorial. I don't recall seeing one before like this with its own statue of a guard.

Not a lot to report tonight. We are back on a campsite surrounded by neatly clipped hedges. This is because the weekend laundry plan failed as the washing machine on the site we were staying on was broken. They got someone out to repair it on a Sunday but by the time it was repaired it was too late unless we were going to spend a fortune on tumble dryer tokens. I'm not sure what was wrong with the machine but the repair involved an angle grinder at one point.
So here we are at the ACSI site at La Monastier sur Gazelle, South East of Le Puy en Vulay with tokens already purchased for a laundry day tomorrow.

It's an odd site, the washing machine is in the same building as reception and wasn't accessible all this afternoon as the reception was closed. They also don't have a toilet emptying point at the moment. A man, I think the owner, is currently building one, which he has curiously sited next to the swimming pool. However, I have been shown a manhole cover to lift when required.

It is markedly chillier this evening, only 21°C at the moment - but we are at an altitude of 830m according to my GPS. We may have to turn the heating on.

 

[davanne]

Still 25 deg here in South Wales ....lovely photos

 

[DBK]

I forgot to mention in yesterday's post that Monastier sur Gazeille is the official starting point of the Stevenson Trail, which is the 150 mile trail first traversed by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1878. He described the walk in his book Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes. Stevenson describes Monastier thus:

"Monastier is notable for the making of lace, for drunkenness, for freedom of language, and for unparalleled political dissension."

I'm not sure of the lace making but otherwise I think this place would suit a lot Funsters. Sadly, it seems to have become a bit respectable now and I saw nothing of what Stevenson saw when I walked up to the village from the campsite.
There is an aire here, close to the village, which looked good from what I could see of it from a distance.

 

[DBK]

Our Loire trip came to an end today but first I had a mountain to climb.

Not a very big mountain, it was the Gerbier de Jonc, which stands above the source of the Loire and can be climbed in about half an hour using a steep path. It could perhaps be more accurately described as a scramble as the were rope fitted in places to help you up the slab. Fortunately, though steepish the path has no vertigo inducing exposed bits. Here is a shot looking down as I was heading up.

The views from the summit were worth the effort.

Going down was less strenuous but just as steep. The thing like a chair you can see in the foreground is a step they have fitted to a slab of rock to create a foothold.

Once back down it was time tick off the Loire. There are apparently five sources of the river around the feet of the Gerbier de Jonc but I went for the easy one - in a cafe called the source of the Loire.

In the building there is a trough filled by a spring. Impressive it isn't but after taking three weeks to get here I wasn't going to denied a small feeling of satisfaction.

OK water molecules, in 1020 km you will become sea water.

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[DBK]

Very slow internet tonight, which why the post above has even more than the usual number of typos - I gave up waiting to edit it after the initial upload then we walked into town for a glass of wine and by the time we got back it was time expired so my errors are now preserved until the end of time - or Jim's server expires.

Although the Loire may start with a few trickles out of the ground it soon gathers volume. This is the river literally just a kilometre or so downstream of the source(s).

 

[Anthea M]

We love the Loire near Amboise so it is interesting to see its little trickle at the source . Thsnks for posting!

 

[DBK]

Still on a poor internet connection but I'll have a go at a quick update.
The aire at Mende is beside the river Lot and from our pitch we had a good view of the Pont Notre Dame.

Which was originally built in the 12th or 13th century depending on which website you look at.

But the highlight of today was the Lot valley. From Mende we travelled west, first on the main N88 for a while then onto minor roads. The D899, D998, D6 and D987 to Espalion. The road, which winds slowly beside the Lot goes through a succession of extraordinary medevial villages, such as St Geniez d'Olt and Ste Eulalie d'Olt.
We then followed the main D920 through the Gorges du Lot where there were more old villages, particularly Estaing. Worth Googling these place names to get an idea what they look like. I would post some pictures off the web if we had a better connection.
We have ended the day at the free aire by the lake at Crandelles a little north west of Aurillac.

The Lot valley was a delightful discovery - we may have to return and find its source.

Edit: Forgot to add that while we were driving through villages ending in d'Olt it occurred to me if this was related to the Lot. Same letters, different order. But in my limited experience French towns on a river are "sur" something, such as sur Loire. However, Googling revealed Olt is an old name, from Occitan I think, for the Lot. Why it is d'Olt remains a mystery.

Wait for it (groan alert)



Not a Lot of people know that.

 

[vwalan]

great pics .
you could get similar here in cornwall and also see the start of the river fal. just outside roche .
unfortunately the weather wont be so nice . hee hee .
have fun and have a great trip.

 

[DBK]

From the lakeside aire at Crandelles we drove northwest for a while until at Argentat we crossed the Dordogne, turned sharply left and then followed the river downstream for the rest of the day.
The Dordogne is a popular destination and deservedly so as it has some very attractive villages and some nice château though the latter are not really up to the standard of some of those on the Loire.
We are staying for a couple of nights at the Port de Limeuil campsite which at €15 a night with electricity is good value I think and it has very large pitches - you could park a couple of big RVs on our current plot.
People, and Brits in large numbers come to Limeuil because it is a pretty place by the junction of the Vézère and the Dordogne.

The inside of the village looks like you might expect - lots of narrow streets and being built on a hill some of them are quite steep.

We have been through a lot of almost deserted villages on this trip, ones with many empty houses up for sale but Limeuil is very different and as we walked through it this morning there were quite a few builders renovating properties. I'm not sure what they are doing here but they seem to building the house from the top down - it should look better when they complete the ground floor.

But modifying properties is not a new idea, I can see signs of at least three alterations in this shot.

Although the weather is overcast today it wasn't cold and Charlie enjoyed a swim on the river afterwards - up periscope!

An enjoyable morning after an early disappointment. During Charlie's first walk of the day before breakfast I came across a mushroom which I thought would taste nice with the bacon Mrs DBK was frying at the time.
All mushrooms with white caps and pink gills are edible with the exception of one - the Yellow Stainer (Agaricus xanthodermus). The English and Latin names (xanthos is Greek for yellow) give a clue to how to identify this fungi. If you bruise or cut it the exposed surface will turn yellow. So I cut across the lower stem which is a good place to look and I was pleased to see it didn't go yellow. I was less pleased with all the holes running up through the stem so I cut it in half to check and found it riddled with maggots!

Not being hungry enough to appreciate the extra protein it has now gone in the bin. The Yellow Stainer won't kill you but it could lead to more frequent cassette emptying than you planned!

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[Deleted member 43219]

If you get the chance to visit any caves with paleolithic art and/or associated exhibitions we'd recommend it highly. The Dordogne (and northern Spain) have some world class stuff.

Tony

 

[DBK]

If you get the chance to visit any caves with paleolithic art and/or associated exhibitions we'd recommend it highly. The Dordogne (and northern Spain) have some world class stuff.

Tony

Just before we arrivex where we are now we drove through a place with lots of storerooms and a few houses I think excavated into the limestone cliffs. It looked relatively recent, certainly not prehistoric, but I guess the rock here lends itself to living in it. I must look at the map and try and remember where it was. It wasn't on the Dordogne as we had taken a wrong turning and left it.

 

[DBK]

We have hit the coast, not literally because if we had driven another half kilometre or so we would have slithered down a mud bank into the Gironde because we are now at Blaye near Bordeaux in the heart of Wineshire.

We are staying at the free aire at the Château Marquis de Vaubon, (CC53173) which for a free aire has all the bells and whistles - free electricity in addition to free facilities for the addition and subtraction of liquids and solids.
Our pitch is among the vines but the signage could be better, there is for example a motorhome service point but it is extremely well hidden.

We visited the wine-making facilities earlier but they seemed distinctly reluctant to offer us any wines to buy or taste. What they seem to concentrate on is organised events, not penurious motorhomers, so we left dry of tongue with only a pack of leaflets all in French.
Charlie didn't know what to make of this turn of events - being unable to buy wine in France - so he tied himself in knots considering the conundrum.

 

[Figaro]

Wow, you were heading east through France the last time I looked, you seem to have doubled back and headed West. I must pay more attention.
Loved your trip through the Loire, I`m headed there the last week in May
Keep up the excellent posts

 

[Figaro]

last week in May

That should say last week in June

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[DBK]

We are now on the Ile d'Oleron - beside some wetlands full of frogs. Sound recording link below.

https://clyp.it/hxbqb2i2#

 

[vwalan]

i cant hear yours but on my phone i have a recording of frogs in imminiki morocco.
you might have listened to it back along .
i very often listen to the recording it brings back nice memories .
there are many amazing things nature gives us for free .
hope you keep your recording . have a good time i,m sure you will.
have a good nights sleep ,ha ha

 

[DBK]

I'm glad we came to the Ile d'Oleron. It may lack the flesh pots and retail therapy outlets of the neighbouring Ile de Re but there is more for us here.
We are on a very quiet site beside some reeds and the frog-filled drain/ditch mentioned earlier. (I'm easily pleased - you can't beat a good ditch. Lots of wildlife here including a slightly angry looking coypu which emerges near us in the morning and evening.

Note its long white whiskers.

Birdlife is good - we saw a spoonbill on the way here when we stopped in the marais for lunch. The marais are drained wetlands, the most well known and extensive is the marais poitevin north east of La Rochelle but you get them elsewhere around this part of France. Black winged stilts and egrets (various) have been seen plus a turtle dove or two. I heard these yesterday, their purring call is very distinctive but they prefer to lurk deep in the canopy of trees and avoid anyone with binoculars. Fortunately, one had a moment of inattention and flew over me today.
The plants are attractive, the orchids are almost over but there are pyramidals still out.

And a lot of lizard orchids, which standing two feet tall at times and in clusters of several dozen are impressive - once you get your eye in to see them as they are predominantly green.

The long lower lip of the flower is of course what gives it it's name.

A yellow stonecrop is common just behind the dunes.

Viper's Bugloss.

Tamarisk is in flower near the wet bits.

There were several marbled white butterflies but they were very reluctant to settle. Then when one did it was upside down!

 

[Oscar]

Following your blog with interest - it's the area we are heading for at the end of June. What resources do you find most useful to find overnight/interesting stoppovers? Thanks

 

[Gorse Hill]

Following your blog with interest - it's the area we are heading for at the end of June. What resources do you find most useful to find overnight/interesting stoppovers? Thanks

Same as us so will be interested in what @DBK used
Excellent thread with plenty of places to visit, Thks

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[Munchie]

We have been to D'Oleron 3 times now and loved it.
SWIMBO has now decreed we must now try Ile DeRe.

 

[DBK]

Following your blog with interest - it's the area we are heading for at the end of June. What resources do you find most useful to find overnight/interesting stoppovers? Thanks

CamperContact and ACSI for places to stop. There are other resources for aires but CamperContact I find much easier to use than the web based versions but I will use things like Park4Night if CC hasn't got anything in a specific place I want to stop at.
As to where to stop, the DK Eyewitness guides are a good overall introduction to a country and highlight the interesting places - but of course if you are looking for a muddy ditch full of frogs then there is no substitute for a map and Google Maps in particular, it's satellite view gives a good impression of an area if you are looking to get away from the crowds.
Plus of course experience, we've been to this island before so had a rough idea what to expect though the north of the island is new to me.

 

[DBK]

We have been to D'Oleron 3 times now and loved it.
SWIMBO has now decreed we must now try Ile DeRe.

I don't think we will have time to visit the Ile de Re on this trip. My impression is it is a good place for restaurants and shops, all in a fairly compact area. Oleron is bigger with a lot more "wilderness". Both islands have good beaches and cycle tracks.

 

[Lenny HB]

I don't think we will have time to visit the Ile de Re on this trip. My impression is it is a good place for restaurants and shops, all in a fairly compact area. Oleron is bigger with a lot more "wilderness". Both islands have good beaches and cycle tracks by all accounts.

We nearly starved there a couple of weeks ago, restaurants only open a couple of days a week out of season and had trouble finding any shops open that sold food.
Didn't think much of the place, all flat and boring not our scene at all. Found cycling difficult due to poor signposting of the cycle ways, you would come to the end of one at a road and find the road had "No Cycling" signs, loads of people going round in circules not knowing where to go. Not a place we would go back to.

 

[DBK]

Tried to photograph some nesting Avocets this morning. Not a great success so far, the depth of field is too narrow on most of the shots I took. I must return this afternoon. All the shots were taken from a public path so hopefully I haven't broken any laws about disturbing them on the nest.

The one in the bottom right here is preening it's chick and there is another chick to the left of her hidden among the stones.

This one stood up when it saw me so I froze and it sat down after a few moments but it did give me time to see her two eggs.

Edit: Ornithological correction - both sexes brood the eggs so for political correctness my reference to "her" above was inclusive of "him".

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[DBK]

We nearly starved there a couple of weeks ago, restaurants only open a couple of days a week out of season and had trouble finding any shops open that sold food.
Didn't think much of the place, all flat and boring not our scene at all. Found cycling difficult due to poor signposting of the cycle ways, you would come to the end of one at a road and find the road had "No Cycling" signs, loads of people going round in circules not knowing where to go. Not a place we would go back to.

The season is very short for most places I think. When we were on a site in the Dordogne at Limeuil there was a big booking chart behind the desk in reception. Up to the middle of July they were showing only 25% full then suddenly they were literally 100% full and remained so until the first few days of September when they went back to 25%. Of course this reflected bookings and in low season itinerants like us would find space but in high season you would have little chance on what was clearly a popular site.

 

[DBK]

My attempt to take more photographs of the avocets wasn't very successful. Perhaps because it is Sunday the path was quite busy and the birds were being disturbed by people stopping to look at them. During a quiet spell I took a few shots.

The first shows a bird relaxed on the nest.

But this one wasn't happy with me being there and started making alarm calls and I knew from this morning if I stayed it would get up and walk away from the nest.

I realised I haven't mentioned where we are.

It is a fairly basic but clean 2* site with a small bar and friendly Dutch owners. The beach is a few hundred yards away and is almost deserted at the moment.

A cycle path leaves from just outside the camp to St Denis d'Oléron, a small town on the other side of the island. There is an industrial sized aire there but it costs €11 a day and lacks the frog-filled ditches of this site. We walked to St Denis yesterday and on to the port beyond it. The cycle path signs said it was 3km but by the time we had toured the port my GPS made it a 10km round trip, which was quite far enough in intermittent light rain. There are cycle paths to the tip of the island where there is a lighthouse, but at 7km or so we will decline doing that on foot and drive there tomorrow when we go on a shopping trip.

The plan is to move north this week but with bad weather forecast we are going to stay here a day or so more until it blows through as the forecast is worse the further north you go.

 

[Munchie]

The moule Mariniere at the big restaurant at the lighthouse is superb!

 

[DBK]

We visited the north tip of the Ile d'Oleron on our last full day to see the big lighthouse.

But we had Charlie with us so we had to pass by the famed mussel restaurant. Hopefully, we will get some moules in Brittany, which is where we will finish, though this time of year probably isn't ideal for them but beggars can't be choosers.

We reluctantly left Les Seulières yesterday and started the northward drift, stopping last night at a site in Chaillé les Marais north east of La Rochelle. There is an aire here but it costs €8 a night and was quite exposed to the strong wind blowing so we opted for the €13.50 ACSI campsite instead and enjoyed a bit of shelter. There was supposed to be a free aire in another village close by but that seemed to have been closed.
Chaillé les Marais is in an area known as the Venise Verte or Green Venice. This is characterised by numerous canals which drain what was originally marsh (marais) but is now farmland. The old villages, like Chaillé are all built on small mounds which raise them above the former marshland. The church here can be seen from some distance away because of its physical elevation - and no doubt spiritual elevation as well.

The canal above runs beside the campsite and in the high season the campsite has free canoes to borrow and explore the network of canals.
The canals also have crayfish in them which as I understand can be fished for with a licence but the season is short. I think these must be the native crayfish and not the invasive and disease ridden signal crayfish we have in large parts of the UK now. I have a drop net which could be used for crayfish wrangling but after reading a story about someone fined €2,500 for illegally trapping crayfish we had a homemade curry instead. (I was in charge of rice)
There was quite a lot of bird life to be seen in the area. We saw several storks nesting on electricity pylons and in in some nests we could see the young storklings waiting for the adults to return with food. There were also several marsh harriers and we had a particularly good view of one sitting on a post beside the road as we drove by.
Today we drove to Les Sables d'Olonne then followed the coast road north, stopping just before the bridge to the Ile de Noirmoutier at an aire belong to the Camping Car Parks group at La Barre de Monts. (BROKEN LINK) This is the first of their aires I've used and it took me a while to work out what to do at the barrier!
At €9.50 a night it is relatively expensive but the pitches have 6A electricity and it has a very fast WiFi which my home made WiFi booster is enjoying. You don't need a booster, particularly if you park near the mast (guess where everybody is ) but we were able to find a nice spot on our own and still enjoy 100+ Mbps Wi-Fi - just updated all my apps and downloaded today's Times.

The beach is a bit weedy after the strong winds. The brown lump in the picture below is Charlie, not a bit of weed. He is lying down exhausted after a swim and being rescued by a mermaid.

Not far away, and just visible through the bridge to the island, is Fromentine which has an excellent restaurant, the Poisonne Rouge. My brother and I had a memorable meal there one evening during our cycle ride up the west cost of France about five years ago. It was ample consolation for our disappointing attempt to cycle off the Ile de Noirmoutier by the tidal road which is the other way onto the island other than the bridge. It is only open an hour or so either side of low tide so you have to time your crossing well - we didn't and had to cycle over the wretched bridge twice - there and dispiritingly back.

We have driven through marais on and off all day but we are now at the northern extremity of the bocage vendéen the name given to this whole area which is a sort of cross between the Somerset levels and the damper bits of Norfolk. A place worth returning to.

 

[DBK]

There's a path which leaves the back of the aire and goes under the bridge, from there it isn't a long walk along the coast to Fromentine. I discovered this on an after supper walk this evening.

So if you come here yourself there's no excuse not to visit the poisonn rouge https://www.tripadvisor.fr/Restaura...a_Barre_de_Monts_Vendee_Pays_de_la_Loire.html

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